Update: There seems to be a problem with fullscreen video rendering with compositing enabled in metacity. Until I find a fix I’ll just have to stop using it.
I have allways thought that people needed to write down what they had done to fix things was a little wierd. Why couldn’t they just remember it? But after other starting to use Arch Linux and asking me how I did different things and fixes I realize that I should have made some memos for later use (now). I probably going to start posting these kinds of post more regularly, at least whenever do some fixes thats forth remembering, but lets get back to the original intent of the post.
So why would I need compositing at all? Well, the whole thing is mostly base upon the fact that I use gnome Do a lot and with compositing it could look cooler and do a some cooler stuff like transparency and docking, basically cool stuff. This is gnome do without compositing and this is gnome do with compositing. Compositing will also make it possible to have some shadows, transparency and other eye-candy stuff. I had thought about using compiz but I have a nice setup with metacity and compiz uses a lot of resources on stuff I don’t need, plus some things I need to fix to get to work, which I don’t bother.
So I did some research and found that it was indeed possible to do compositing in metacity. To make a potentially long post a little shorter I found a program that manages compositing for metacity. It is called xcompmgr and is a commandline program, there is a graphical front-end (gcompmgr) but I could not get it to work. the command xcompmgr -cCfF -t-5 -l-5 -r4.2 -o.55 -D6 & enables the compositing and configures the shadows nicely. The command is found on the previously linked wiki page for xcompmgr. Xcompmgr is found in AUR on Arch Linux.
So now I got compositing without having to use compiz. If you like the whole wobbling windows, animations and rotating desktop, compiz is what you need. But if you are looking compositing for a spesific thing (like gnome do) of just what to have a little sleeker desktop without having to use compiz, xcompmgr is the way to go. It supposedly works for other windows managers as well, not only metacity.
Resources: Enable Metacity Compositing in GNOME 2.22 Gcompmgr: Graphical front end for Xcompmgr Composite Window Manager Xcompmgr on Arch Wiki